Microsoft's acquisition of Activison Blizzard

[AshHunter216]

Gameranx has a hilariously biased article about what that Dakota senator is doing. They even claim that Sony buying Bungie and not signing the 10 year contract from MS counts as being anti competitive. It's utterly ridiculous, especially when both Nintendo and Microsoft do 3rd party exclusive deals as well, given that it's a common practice in the industry. It's somehow only a problem when Playstation has exclusives.

This is really one piss poor article.

A US Senator Just Wrote Sony Directly About Their Anti-Competitive Practices - Gameranx

North Dakota junior senator Kevin Cramer has written a letter to Sony's CEO, asking about their anti-competitive practices.

gameranx.com

 

[Loy310]

Gameranx has a hilariously biased article about what that Dakota senator is doing. They even claim that Sony buying Bungie and not signing the 10 year contract from MS counts as being anti competitive. It's utterly ridiculous, especially when both Nintendo and Microsoft do 3rd party exclusive deals as well, given that it's a common practice in the industry. It's somehow only a problem when Playstation has exclusives.

This is really one piss poor article.

A US Senator Just Wrote Sony Directly About Their Anti-Competitive Practices - Gameranx

North Dakota junior senator Kevin Cramer has written a letter to Sony's CEO, asking about their anti-competitive practices.

gameranx.com

That was hard to read and i fux with gr on yt. Had no idea they have children slave writers working for them.....

 

[AshHunter216]

That was hard to read and i fux with gr on yt. Had no idea they have children slave writers working for them.....

The problem could just be that writer.

 

[Fenton]

 

[TubzGaming]

We need a dedicated misconceptions thread to address false information. There's a lot of it floating around, like the nature of parity clauses, alleged payment for cross-play, or the notion Sony are going around blocking random 3rd-party games from releasing on Game Pass. The only contracts that have such a provision are those Sony have signed a co-marketing agreement with. There's all manner of bogus info. Not limited to any one platform either. Proposed thread title:

End The FUD | Addressing Misconceptions

Is that something members would find helpful and mods would allow?

Go right ahead but please post it in https://icon-era.com/forums/gaming-industry.22/
When it is done @ me and i will sticky the thread

 

[Papacheeks]

Good. Hopefully not in the long term either. The sooner Xbox dies the better for the console market, maybe a decent and capable competitor can then occupy that space.

I feel and this is my honest opinion:

I own 2 OG Xbox’s, Xbox 360 elite, Xbox one S controller for PC.
I use to love like many early years of Xbox when a lot of people called OG Xbox Dreamcast 2.
It was edgy, disruptive with pc developers bringing different genres of titles to consoles. It honestly pushed Nintendo to change direction after GameCube. They had another early prototype that was similar in spec as OG Xbox but custom Radeon like GameCube.
They shifted and went different direction. Early 360 years were great, Xbox was really trying.

But something internally changed, and I think it was OG crew from Direct X team left, and j allard left. Leaving only enterprise people to run decisions for division. To me this was Xbox’s down turn and what lead to post 2010 years being a huge 180 in everything that made Xbox edgy and cool software/direction wise. Now enterprise regardless of Phil Spencer, and the likes has full control of Xbox’s direction. Meaning any money invested goes towards their enterprise goal not the goal of making Xbox as a console/brand synonymous with high quality unique games that define abd distinguish the brand like OG XBOX/Early xb360 did.

Now it’s a soulless brand that even with their gamepass marketing has little to no identity outside of a service that even is advertised in a enterprise way ad wise.
I think the hope we all had after Xbox one debacle and reinvestment in 2018 fir Xbox to get back to their roots as a brand is gone at this point.

And to me that’s sad as fuck. And to me means I don’t care anymore for this brand. And that means I don’t even care anymore to talk about them.
Nothing even with games like HIFI rush do I care. As far as I’m concerned it’s still a Tango/Bethesda title.
I know this is eye rolling to Xbox fans. But to me a lot of the titles coming out don’t associate for me the Xbox brand.

I honestly would rather someone else replace Microsoft at this point.

I would love for Sega to be backed by AMAZON or apple for online/server backend. But let Sega design/make their console and bring all their heritage to it.
At this point after Halo died the way it has I’m 100% done with the brand.

I have a PC and PS5. I see no need, and I think after this latest debacle and possibly Starfield as well a lot of core people are too.

 

[Nhomnhom]

I feel and this is my honest opinion.

I own 2 OG Xbox’s, Xbox 360 elite, Xbox one S controller for PC.

I use to love like many early years of Xbox when a lot of people called OG Xbox Dreamcast 2.

It was edgy, disruptive with pc developers bringing different genres of titles to consoles. It honestly pushed Nintendo to change direction after GameCube. They had another early prototype that was similar in spec as OG Xbox but custom Radeon like GameCube.

They shifted and went different direction. Early 360 years were great, Xbox was really trying.

But something internally changed, and I think it was OG crew from Direct X team left, and j allard left. Leaving only enterprise people to run decisions for division. To me this was Xbox’s down turn and what lead to post 2010 years being a huge 180 in everything that made Xbox edgy and cool software/direction wise.

Now enterprise regardless of Phil Spencer, and the likes has full control of Xbox’s direction. Meaning any money invested goes towards their enterprise goal not the goal of making Xbox as a console/brand synonymous with high quality unique games that define abd distinguish the brand like OG XBOX/Early xb360 did.

Now it’s a soulless brand that even with their gamepass marketing has little to no identity outside of a service that even is advertised in a enterprise way ad wise.

I think the hope we all had after Xbox one debacle and reinvestment in 2018 fir Xbox to get back to their roots as a brand is gone at this point.

And to me that’s sad as fuck. And to me means I don’t care anymore for this brand. And that means I don’t even care anymore to talk about them.

Nothing even with games like HIFI rush do I care. As far as I’m concerned it’s still a Tango/Bethesda title.

I know this is eye rolling to Xbox fans. But to me a lot of the titles coming out don’t associate for me the Xbox brand.

I honestly would rather someone else replace Microsoft at this point.

I would love for Sega to be backed by AMAZON or apple for online/server backend. But let Sega design/make their console and bring all their heritage to it.

At this point after Halo died the way it has I’m 100% done with the brand.

I have a PC and PS5.

I see no need, and I think after this latest debacle and possibly Starfield as well a lot of core people are too.

To me it comes down to Phil Spencer. From him completely mishandling Rare and Lionhead, to him becoming general manager of Microsoft Studios in 2008, to him taking over the Xbox division in 2014. He also somehow get's away with being one of the higher ranking guys during the Xbox One launch disaster. You can tie him directly to pretty much Xbox biggest shortcomings and the bigger he become there the worse the entire thing got. He took over, canceled games and then did jack shit to make up for that until the new consoles were about to release.

They were not ready at all to launch the Series despite spending the years prior buying a bunch of studios, his answer to that was to manufacture a bunch of CGs of games that are yet to be shown to this day (as well as fake demos like the Minecraft RT one). On the hardware front they chose to make something as stupid as the Series S, chose proprietary storage, didn't innovate on a single thing (including showing up again with a slight variation of the 360 controller) and to this day their hardware is struggling to showcase it's capabilities. A few month before the consoles release they scrambled to buy Bethesda and started this whole publisher acquisitions nonsense that so far amounted to HiFi Rush (a game that didn't even chart because they chose to stealth release it).

 

[Nitro]

Go right ahead but please post it in https://icon-era.com/forums/gaming-industry.22/
When it is done @ me and i will sticky the thread

It is done.

False information, Clickbait Journalism & Popular Misconceptions

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a propaganda tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations and politics. FUD is a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative or false information—often against a competing product—and a manifestation of the appeal to fear. This thread is...

icon-era.com

 

[TubzGaming]

As promised i have Stickied the Thread.

False information, Clickbait Journalism & Popular Misconceptions

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a propaganda tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations and politics. FUD is a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative or false information—often against a competing product—and a manifestation of the appeal to fear. This thread is...

icon-era.com

@Nitro

 

[Bryank75]

Important;

 

[AshHunter216]

Important;

I wonder if the FTC could squeeze tougher remedies out of them.

 

[nongkris]

I'm pretty sure I read that the FTC wants to block the deal outright and take them to court, so these 'remedies' won't work with Lina Khan. If the CMA are dumb enough to let this fly then there's no reason they should've stalled the NVIDIA/ARM merger, just let the corporations gobble up their competitors.

 

[AshHunter216]

I'm pretty sure I read that the FTC wants to block the deal outright and take them to court, so these 'remedies' won't work with Lina Khan. If the CMA are dumb enough to let this fly then there's no reason they should've stalled the NVIDIA/ARM merger, just let the corporations gobble up their competitors.

Yeah, I think out of all the regulators, the FTC came out the strongest against the deal with the cma being second, but there's been a lot of doubt cast on whether they would be capable of actually beating MS in court and convincing a federal judge to block the deal. There's a chance depending on the kind of judge they get, but who knows.

 

[FatKaz]

I'm pretty sure I read that the FTC wants to block the deal outright and take them to court, so these 'remedies' won't work with Lina Khan. If the CMA are dumb enough to let this fly then there's no reason they should've stalled the NVIDIA/ARM merger, just let the corporations gobble up their competitors.

What I loved about the FTC is they announced they wanted to block it right after brad smith allegedly went to talk with them to get ahead of any opposition, khan basically told him to take a hike.

That's why he was mad and said something along the lines of we tried to give peace a chance.

In really surprise we haven't heard anything yet from any outlets on what way the CMA is leaning now. But I guess this week we definatley should.

 

[FatKaz]

Next key dates posted by idas over at era

The EC are faffing around with market tests for weeks, while CMA doesn't? Assuming CMA approves on the 26th, i still find it strange they approve ahead of the EC.

I know folks are thinking CMA will do a 180 on the cloud SLC and just let it through, but considering even the spineless EC are considering cloud concessions, i can't see CMA not do the same.

 

[AshHunter216]

Next key dates posted by idas over at era

The EC are faffing around with market tests for weeks, while CMA doesn't? Assuming CMA approves on the 26th, i still find it strange they approve ahead of the EC.

I know folks are thinking CMA will do a 180 on the cloud SLC and just let it through, but considering even the spineless EC are considering cloud concessions, i can't see CMA not do the same.

I personally don't think they'll just let it through with zero concessions, but there's the risk that they suddenly become OK with really weaksauce remedies.

 

[Sircaw]

As promised i have Stickied the Thread.

False information, Clickbait Journalism & Popular Misconceptions

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a propaganda tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations and politics. FUD is a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative or false information—often against a competing product—and a manifestation of the appeal to fear. This thread is...

icon-era.com

@Nitro

We don't pay you enough, anyone got some free game passcodes we can send to this man, (Maybe a life time subscription one )

 

[Johnic]

We don't pay you enough, anyone got some free game passcodes we can send to this man, (Maybe a life time subscription one )

I have a lifetime GP sub but he'll owe me about $7000.

 

[Dabaus]

So didn’t Microsoft receive the official remedy proposal from the cma on like Friday? Surprised we haven’t heard a controlled leak yet from them. I guess if it was bad news we’d see more paid for hit pieces?

 

[AshHunter216]

So didn’t Microsoft receive the official remedy proposal from the cma on like Friday? Surprised we haven’t heard a controlled leak yet from them. I guess if it was bad news we’d see more paid for hit pieces?

There was the Senator accusing Sony of being anti competitive on Friday, but I'm thinking the media reaction isn't a good indication of how things are going. They've been bashing Playstation even when things ARE going their way with regulators. They're pissed at Sony for even trying to resist them.